Real Hard Cases by Robert Jeffrey

Author:Robert Jeffrey [Jeffrey, Robert, Brown, Les]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781845026288
Publisher: Black & White Publishing

8

SERIOUS RETAIL REFRESHMENT – FREE

There is a rather chauvinist joke about where a woman goes when the going gets tough. A trip to major-league shops, a hit on the husband’s credit card, a nice cup of tea and a journey home festooned with shopping bags sporting upmarket logos can work wonders. Retail refreshment is powerful medicine and I suppose it does work. But, for the detective, shopping or, in his case, shoplifting can turn up interesting cases where the customer takes a trip to the stores and leaves well refreshed with no money changing hands. And here I am not talking about little old ladies who nick a tin of ham off the bottom shelf of a corner shop. There are ‘super shoplifters’ and large shoplifting gangs who, despite specialising in non-violent crime, can sometimes be as ingenious and as hard to catch as some of their more ruthless brethren.

But it has to be admitted that many shoplifters are well known to the cops and sometimes it is far from a hard case to nab them. A classic example was a guy called Shorty who turned out to be better known to the police than even a naturally suspicious copper like myself would believe possible. He was a regular criminal who was lifted for all sorts of minor offences, including shoplifting.

On one occasion, he had been arrested by cops in the Shawlands area and, having heard of me, he told the desk cops he wanted to speak to me. I turned up not knowing quite what to expect but Shorty said he wanted a favour. He told me that, if I had the power to release him there and then, he would return to the police station voluntarily the next morning – guaranteed. I was shocked when he told me the reason it was so important that he got out that night. He said he was needed to play on the left wing of a police football team. Apparently he had mates in the Tobago Street Police Station team and they had a particularly important match on that night.

Slightly gobsmacked, as they say, I called the duty officer at Tobago Street and he said they did have a big game on that night, against another police side. I mentioned Shorty and was told he was one of their stars – a wizard on the left wing. He was not released and the team, minus their best player, was beaten. It amazed me that such a criminal was mixing socially with police officers. It adds a whole new dimension to the phrase ‘known to the police’!

Shorty’s pals in blue must have been going around with their eyes half shut for, in his latest escapade, he was involved in some serious action. We discovered that he was selling very expensive-looking rings at a fraction of their apparent true value. We listened to what was being said on the streets and turned up enough info to allow us to intercept a car containing Shorty and a few cronies, all active criminals.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.